Charming (Exiled Book 3) (10 page)

Dandy laughed. “Yes. You’re probably right.” She looked at the kids. “So what are you having?”

Ember looked up at River with her engaging smile and sparkling eyes. “What’s good?”

“Everything’s good, sweetheart. Special of the day is flank steak in brown gravy with onion rings.”

Ember scrunched up her nose. “What else have you got?”

“Onion soup, egg salad sandwiches, lamb stew…”

Ember stopped her there. “I’ll have just the egg salad. No bread.”

“Okay,” River said, then looked at the boys.

“Flank steak. Extra onion rings,” said Dread.

“Same,” said Raze.

“Lamb stew,” Dandy said. “But now I’m craving onion rings so I’ll have some of those, too.”

“Pregnant again?” River said.

Dandy grinned, “No. I…” Her smile faded as she seemed to contemplate the question seriously. “Shit.”

River and the three kids laughed.

“So we may have another sib on the way?” Ember rested her head in her hand and smiled.

“I don’t think so, but it’s not impossible. It’s not like…”

“It’s not like Crave isn’t, um, active.” Dread said with a hint of distaste. “We lived in the same house with you guys for a long time.”

“Yes, but you’re supposed to pretend that you can’t hear everything.”

“None of us can act that well,” Raze added with a laugh.

And the kids had a laugh at Dandy’s expense, but she didn’t mind. She and Crave had both been raised to believe that it was healthy and wholesome for kids to grow up knowing the heads of the household were in love and expressed that in all kinds of ways including physical.

When Ember tired of talking about social work, Dandy asked Raze how his architecture classes were going.

“I like it except when they tell me my drawings are ridiculous and that nobody would want to live or work in buildings like the ones in my head.”

Dandelion was a little shocked that there were adults who would be so critical and dismissive of young talent.

“Let me remind you that humans made fun of Crave’s electrical car designs and now he can’t make them fast enough to keep up with orders. They’re even trying to figure out a way to build a, I forgot what you call it…”

“Factory?” Raze asked.

“Yes. A factory so that they can make more quicker.” She looked up suddenly. “Raze, you should talk to Crave about his ideas. Who would he rather have as his architect?”

“I’m not qualified yet,” Raze said.

“Yeah. The place would probably fall down,” Dread teased. Ember smacked him on the shoulder. “Ow.” He smiled. It didn’t hurt, but he adored his sister and saw no harm in giving her the satisfaction of thinking she’d landed a righteous slap.

“So,” Dandy said. “You draw it up and then let somebody more experienced look at it and make sure it won’t fall down.”

Raze couldn’t help but smile. “That would be…” He paused and they waited for him to supply the word that would finish that sentence and give it meaning. “Wonderful.”

Dandelion beamed. “It’s decided then. Crave will be so proud.”

“It doesn’t take much to make Crave proud.” Dread chuckled and Dandy punched him in the same spot Ember had attacked moments before.

Only that time when he said, “Ow,” he meant it.

When the food arrived, the first thing Ember did was to reach over and grab one of Dread’s onion rings.

“Hey,” he said. “You had a chance to get your own. But no. You
just
wanted egg salad.”

“Don’t be selfish,” she said.

“Ember. it’s not selfish to want to eat what I ordered.”

“Here,” she replied, holding out a forkful of egg salad. “Eat this and we’ll be even.”

“First you take one of my onion rings and now you want to punish me with that?” He wrinkled his nose and gently pushed away the hand that held out the bite of egg salad. “No thanks.”

“Okay,” she said as she turned the other way and took one of Raze’s onion rings.

“Ember!” he said. “You always do that. Why don’t you just get what you really want to eat in the first place?” She pursed her lips. “Never mind. I’ll tell you why. Because for some perverse reason you think it’s more fun to steal our food.”

While his two siblings were having the usual exchange about food theft, Dread looked across the pub and saw a female emerge from the kitchen and make her way to a stool next to Charming. Judging by the smile on her face, it looked like the Leader had a girlfriend. She was cute. Very cute and very human. An involuntary growl rumbled low in his throat.

“What’s wrong?” Dandelion asked.

He looked up to see that his family had stopped eating and were staring at him. “What?”

“You growled. Why?” Raze said.

“Oh,” he smiled. “Just warning Ember that the next time she reaches for my plate she’s going to pull back a hand that’s been nipped instead of an onion ring.”

“Grief, Dread. It’s just food. Don’t take it so personal.”

“Personally,” Dandy said.

“Yeah. Personally,” Ember repeated.

Dandy turned toward Dread. “What about you, sweetheart? How’s biology going?”

He cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah. It was Biological Engineering, but I switched to Criminal Justice a while ago.”

“Criminal Justice!” Dandy couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d said doilies. “But our people don’t ever commit crimes. Will the humans accept hybrid police? I would have thought they’d find that, ah, threatening.”

Dread shrugged. “They didn’t say no when I applied.”

Dandy nodded. “Well. Alright then. If that’s what you want. I know you’ll be marvelous at whatever you set out to do. I’m kind of surprised that happened a while ago and I didn’t know about it.”

“It’s okay. You have your hands full. It’s not like I’m the only one.”

“You may not be the only one,” she admonished, “but I…” the three kids joined in and finished the sentence in unison, “love you all just the same.”

Laughter broke out at the precise manner in which the recitation was delivered. Dandy saw Ember eyeing Raze’s onion rings and handed over one from her own plate before it could become an issue. Again.

“Speaking of police work, I’ve heard there’s been some trouble down here in the city.”

Dread huffed. “Understatement. You can
feel
the change. I mean it was bad before, but…”

Dandy’s gaze jerked to Dread and zeroed in like a laser. “What do you mean it was bad before?” The three kids looked between each other like Dread had let a shared secret out of the bag. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Dread asked.

“That thing you do,” she pointed at the three of them, “when you’re engaging in a conspiracy to get away with something.”

“We don’t do that.” Ember looked innocent and shook her beautiful head.

“The hell you don’t! Who do you think you’re talking to?”

Ember dropped the guileless act. “Okay. Here’s the truth. The human boys try to start fights, knowing that we can’t fight back. There’s no point in telling you about it,” she gave Dread a pointed look, “because you can’t
do
anything.”

Dandy’s own temper shot off the charts. She looked around the table imagining her kids being tormented by humans and not being able to stand up for themselves.

When the hybrids had first begun moving to Farsuitwail and integrating they quickly realized that they had to make themselves untenable. So the first and foremost law was that hybrids could not raise a hand against humans under any circumstances. It meant that humans couldn’t complain about hybrids using their superior size and strength against them. But it also meant that, over time, young humans figured out that they could taunt their hybrid counterparts with impunity.

Recognizing that the young, especially males, often need to play sports to work off aggression sparked by hormones, the joint-authority agreed to integrate schools, but segregate sports programs. As time passed the hybrid leagues picked up more and more spectators while the only people who came to see the human kids play were parents.

By the time the human boys were coming of age they were angry about the attention the hybrid boys got, not only from girls, but also in sports and coveted the recognition. If that wasn’t enough, they were also taking the best spots in higher education programs.

The smile had disappeared from Dandelion’s face and voice when she asked, “What do they do?”

Raze sat back in his chair and looked around the pub while Ember stared at her plate. Dread, on the other hand, took a bite from a stick of celery and said, “In a word, they jeer, mock, ridicule, deride, bait, and needle especially if there’s an audience. The bigger, the better. They know we have to just take it. So it’s sport to them. Meanness for the sake of meanness, at our expense.”

Dandy put her spoon down with a clink. “How long has this been going on?”

“Since the first day we moved down here,” said Ember, still staring at her plate.

“We don’t care so much when they say things about us,” Dread continued. “It’s the usual inanities. Pussies. Whiny little bitches. The worst is when they say stuff about Ember. You know, sexual stuff. They get right in our faces with it, trying to get us to react.”

When Dandy looked at Ember with a question in her eyes, Ember’s face flushed so red it looked painful. Dandelion stood up so fast the chair she was sitting in fell over.

“What are you doing?” Raze asked. When Dandy looked at him, he could see that she was enraged, ready to count coup and get names later. And the look on her face alarmed him. “Mom.” He rarely called Dandelion ‘Mom’, but wanted to be sure he had her attention. “Take it easy and sit down. It’s not so bad. We’re dealing.”

“You are not here to ‘deal’,” she hissed. “You’re here to live your life to its fullest potential and I’ll not have little human upstarts interfering with that.” She looked at Ember. “And you’re so wrong if you think I can’t
do
anything about it. It just so happens that my brother-in-law is a
very
important guy.”

She threw the napkin down on her chair and stormed across the pub to where Charming sat having dinner at the bar, quietly talking to Ana.

“Shit,” Raze said glancing at Ember who was still a bright red. He reached over and squeezed her shoulder before glaring at Dread who was calmly chewing on celery sticks.

Dandelion came up on Charming’s side away from Ana and said, “I need to speak with you privately.”

He looked at her. “Now?”

Taking in her demeanor, he believed her when she repeated, “Now.”

He told Ana he’d be back in a minute and asked Scar if they could use his office for a quick chat. Scar raised an eyebrow, but gave a quick jerk of a nod.

After repeating what she’d been told, she said, “Did you know this was going on?”

Charming took in a deep breath and sighed heavily. “Yeah. It’s not ideal, I grant you.”

“Not ideal?” Her laugh was belligerent. “You’re going to have to do better than that, brother. You’re the highest ranking hybrid in the city. That means that, when I send my precious babies down here for your safekeeping, I’m making you responsible.”

“I know,” he said. “But you have to understand what would happen to the peace between humans and hybrids if we started resolving our disagreements physically. Humans have to believe we’re tame as stuffed animals or they’ll start listening to the anti-hybrid hate groups.”

“What’s going on between the kids isn’t a disagreement. It’s human boys taking advantage of the fact that our children’s hands have been tied so that they can’t defend themselves.”

“They can defend themselves if they’re attacked physically.”

Dandy pulled back and looked at Charming like he’d just lost her respect. “Words can be weapons. And I have to believe you know that.”